Archives for October 2008

“The point is, though, that — and it’s not just charity, it’s not just that I want to help the middle class and working people who are trying to get in the middle class — it’s that when we actually make sure that everybody’s got a shot – when young people can all go to college, when everybody’s got decent health care, when everybody’s got a little more money at the end of the month – then guess what? Everybody starts spending that money, they decide maybe I can afford a new car, maybe I can afford a computer for my child. They can buy the products and services that businesses are selling and everybody is better off. All boats rise. That’s what happened in the 1990s, that’s what we need to restore. And that’s what I’m gonna do as president of the United States of America.

“John McCain and Sarah Palin they call this socialistic,” Obama continued. “You know I don’t know when, when they decided they wanted to make a virtue out of selfishness.”

Once he is sworn in, expect Obama to move on multiple fronts to intimidate or silence critics. He has expressed opposition to renewal of the Fairness Doctrine, an action that would all but destroy Talk Radio and cripple the expression of conservative dissent. But he could accomplish much the same effect by imposing ownership caps and other measures, as Jesse Walker pointed out recently:

“There’s a host of other broadcast regulations that Obama has not foresworn. In the worst-case scenario, they suggest a world where the FCC creates intrusive new rules by fiat, meddles more with the content of stations’ programs, and uses the pending extensions of broadband access as an opportunity to put its paws on the Internet. At a time when cultural production has been exploding, fueled by increasingly diverse and participatory new media, we would be stepping back toward the days when the broadcast media were a centralized and cozy public-private partnership.”

The conservative non-profit and think tank communities will also be targeted. The Clinton administration used IRS investigations of trumped-up charges of tax exemption abuse to force The Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute and other other major conservative tanks to spend millions of dollars and countless man-hours defending themselves and their donors. That diverted millions of dollars worth of resources that could have otherwise been devoted to making the case against Slick Willie’s liberal policies.

Expect the same from the IRS under Obama, plus even more aggressive efforts in the form of attempts to impose racial and other quotas on think tanks at their director and management levels, via regulatory changes in tax-exemption administration. Legislation to do this in California at the state level is already progressing in the legislature there, so similar federal efforts are a virtual certainty.

And business community organizations like the Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business shouldn’t think they will be exempt, either. The same exemption regulation that will be used to throw Heritage and Cato back onto the defensive will be deployed against business associations.

Ditto for defense and other firms doing business with the government. Expect massive increases in regulatory interference in the way these companies do business, including particularly their hiring and firing processes. Davis-Bacon’s “prevailing wage” requirements on federal contractors are a mere taste of what an Obama administration will do to insure company executives think twice before criticizing Obama policies in internal communications or in comments to the media.

Won’t the First Amendment prevent the creation of this Caracas on the Potomac? Well, ask yourself this: How effective was it in preventing the imposition of speech codes that effectively silence so much dissent from the liberal orthodoxy on the typical American campus?

The Washington Times, N.Y. Post and Dallas Morning News — three newspapers that recently endorsed John McCain — have been kicked off Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s plane in the final days of his campaign.

The Obama campaign informed The Washington Times Thursday evening of its decision, which came two days after The Times editorial page endorsed Senator John McCain over Mr. Obama. The Times editorial page runs completely independent of the news department.

“This feels like the journalistic equivalent of redistributing the wealth. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars covering Senator Obama’s campaign, traveling on his plane, and taking our turn in the reporter’s pool, only to have our seat given away to someone else in the last days of the campaign,” said Washington Times Executive Editor John Solomon. News organizations typically pay campaigns for the cost of traveling on the candidate’s planes.

Watching a Senator Barack Obama worship service — I mean campaign rally stop — almost makes me wonder why I’m not voting for him. Will he really begin to “heal the planet” and slow the rise of the oceans? Can all of these devoted disciples of The One be wrong?

Yes they can!

Excuse me for not taking part in the Obamagasms but this election is looking a lot more like 1984 instead of 2008. The Ministry of Truth keeps telling us what is okay to believe about Obama and that his words don’t really mean what they do. News outlets are banned from interviewing the candidate, citizens are investigated for asking questions, websites are scrubbed of controversial information and potentially embarrassing video tapes are kept under wraps. I understand this sounds a little Cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but hear me out.

This is the final weekend before the Presidential election, and the media is intent in hiding any information that might hurt the chances of Obama becoming President of the United States. All day today I’ll be doing a roundup of stories on the LA Times’ decision not to release the tape, or the transcript of the dinner where Barack Obama, Bernardine Dorn, William Ayers and others celebrated of Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for PLO master-terrorist Yasser Arafat – and his new job, the Edward Said chair at Columbia University.

The full story couldn’t be more relevant. Barack Obama says he is a staunch supporter of Israel. The importance of the Khalidi festivities isn’t simply that Obama lavished praise on a man who was an Arafat apologist — although that is troubling in itself. What also matters is that many speakers (no doubt including Obama’s good friend Khalidi himself) said extremely provocative things about Israel and American policy.

UPDATE, Saturday 1 November
The poetry slam was something else! For the first half hour the switchboard didn’t work, so start listening at the 30-minute mark, and then we had a wonderful time. Jane Goodwin, Shane and Frank were there, along with the recurrent audio of Vincent Price, which kept popping up whether we wanted it or not.

Haunted? only with laughter!

Earler,Jane Goodwin‘s back with more poetry, and it’s Halloween, so we’ll combine every theme and add a few spooky poems to the mix. Call in with your favorites!

Chat’s open at 6:45PM, and the call in number is 646 652-2639. Join us!

Last night I was talking to a friend, who in the past couple of days had received a few emails and phone calls from the Obama campaign asking for donations. She wondered what the money would go for. After all, here in NJ (the true-blue-bluest of the blue states) we are bombarded with round-the-clock Obama advertising in the local, New York, and Pennsylvania stations. Obama’s already outspent McCain by over $500,000,000. They can’t possibly be buying more ads.

With just 5 days left in the campaign, and with little buys left that could affect the outcome, the only logical reason for Barack Obama to be collecting money now is for expenses after election day. And there’s a limited range of possibilities — paying the transition staff a little more, throwing a more extravagant inaugural ball, or bringing litigation to challenge the results on election day.

Now let’s carry that speculation one inch further: If Obama wins the presidency but the Dems don’t get a supermajority, then they’ll litigate those seats.